THE REALITY OF BLINDNESS

by Deanna Scoggins

Editor's Note: This article is reprintedfrom Fall,
1987 issue of Kid-Bits, a newsletter published by
the Kentucky School for the Blind.

When people ask me if I have been blind all my
life, sometimes I answer, "Not yet." Really, I was
born with ROP (Retinopathy of Prematurity), or
as it was called then -- RLF (Retrolental
fibroplasia). I have no visual memory.

When I was small, I would hear people talk about
my being blind. I would ask what that meant. "It
means you can't see," people would answer. So I tried to figure out what that meant. I decided that
being blind meant that I could not read and that
I bumped into things. So there were times when
I set out to become sighted. I learned to read the
capital alphabet letters from my ABC blocks, and
I practiced for hours walking around slowly
enough so as not to hit anything. "Does all this
mean that now I can see?", I would ask. "No," my
brother said. "But you did a pretty good job of
pretending."

Then there was the day that, as a teenager, I was
not going to "look blind." I was going to walk without a cane and do everything just the way
everyone else did. So I walked without my cane,
and bumped into a hundred things. I felt
miserable the whole time. But I was still going to
"look sighted." So in church, when everyone else
got a hymnal, I also picked one up. I turned what
I thought was the appropriate number of pages.
"You have that book upside down," a neighbor
said to me. I then decided that I was through
pretending.

The time I most remember about rationalizing
blindness happened to me when I was five. I was
going to church with a family who had a three-year-old
named Pat. "There's a bus ahead of us,"
Pat said. "And it's full of other kids." "There's no
bus," I said. We continued to argue about this and
I just knew I was right. "Is there a bus?" I asked
Pat's mom. "Yes" she replied. "Why did she know
this and she's only three, and I didn't know and
I'm five?" I asked. This was really a blow to my
rather large ego, and I was perplexed. "Well," said
Pat's mom, "she knew because she could see the
bus." "Oh, I see it now," I rationalized. "I forgot to
look." Pat's mom didn't say any more. She knew
that I had had all I could handle at the time, and
that I would figure everything out later.

I then knew that other people were getting information
in a way that I was not. I could no longer
rationalize that. I had to decide what to do. I
could either accept myself and be happy, or I
could go around waiting for pity and handouts. I
decided that I was more like Pat and the other
children than I was different, and that if I was
going to be the best person I could be, I had better
spend my time getting some of this information
that I was missing.
I am now a teacher at the Kentucky School for
the Blind and am very happy. I think we all have
shortcomings, and there might still be a few
things I don't know that sighted adults have
known most of their lives. When I learn something
new, I will just be filling in a gap.

When we talk to children and help them to face
the reality of their situation, I think it is important
to let them rationalize some. It is a part of
figuring out who they are and how they fit in.
However, it is very important that they not blame
everything on their visual impairment. I did this
very often until someone pointed out that being
in a bad mood in the morning had nothing to do
with being blind, it was just the way I was. I can't
reach high places because I'm short. I can play
the piano because I have musical ability. Reaching
high places and playing the piano have nothing
to do with having a visual impairment.

I wish my parents and I had talked more about
blindness and what not being able to see meant.
That would have avoided some misperceptions
and my asking my cousins and friends some
strange questions. Don't be afraid to talk about
blindness, and help your child realize that visual
impairment is a part, but not the most important
part, of them. Let's not forget to look at visually
impaired children as children who are more like
their peers than they are different.

(About our contributer: Deanna Scoggins is a
teacher of Special Class II at the Kentucky School for the Blind. She received her B.S. from Georgetown
College and her certification in vision
through the University of Louisville.)